Apprentice appeal

15th of October 2010

As French reporter Christian Bouzols explains, the French cleaning federation has set aside funds to help apprentices in the industry with living costs.

As young people starting off in working life, apprentices often need a bit of material support. They’ll need to find a place to live, to have a driving licence and to acquire some of the tools of their trade. This is also true of cleaning apprentices. Although families are there to help, the investment can be quite onerous for some of them. The apprentices will need to pass their driving test, make a down payment for their accommodation, purchase some tools, and pay for the cost of canteen meals.

The French cleaning federation has thought of all this. Via a special fund for the employment and professional integration of young people, it provides logistic support to all the apprentices who apply for it.

At the start of this autumn-winter term in mid-September, about 1,200 apprentices began their training at the seven specialist centres for cleaning apprentices in Tours, Rennes, Lyon, Villejuif, Marseille, Toulouse and Pessac.

Funding assistance

Some of them needed to be helped with some funding and logistical support, all of which was provided by the cleaning sector, making it easier for these young people to enter into professional life and live independently.

Last year, some 700 of the 1,200 new entrants received help of this kind, totalling €550,000. Accommodation support was the help most in demand. The money was not only needed to pay the regular rent, but also to produce the down payment demanded. Constantly rising rents in some big towns are causing problems for many of the apprentices. This is particularly true of large towns, such as Toulouse, Rennes, and Lyon, where there are already many students.

Lump sumsMany grants, supplied as lump sums of €500, have also been awarded to meet the cost of a driving licence or public transport. However the apprentices didn’t have to apply for free cleaning equipment from the Federation. This equipment is supplied automatically, free of charge, to all the new apprentices.

There are currently 75,000 apprentices in France, of whom 1,200 belong to the cleaning sector.